This year BOSS Magazine profiled some of the nation's sharpest minds and took a look at who reigns supreme in business, finance and the law, as well as some of the young-guns hot on their heels. 

This could be Macquarie's next CEO

There have been many turning points in Shemara Wikramanayake's successful 30-year career at Macquarie Group, but two really stand out. In the early 2000s she took 12 months off to figure out if she could find a better use for her talents. "Luckily for Macquarie, I discovered I had no other talents and so I'm back here. What I found from that year off is I really love what I do," she says.

The second big turning point in Wikramanayake's career was in 2008, soon after Nicholas Moore took over as chief executive of the group. He appointed her head of Macquarie Asset Management after 20 years working in mergers and acquisitions, funds management and investment banking.

Kath's real-life hunk of spunk is a CEO

Corrs Chambers Westgarth CEO John Denton and his wife, actor and comedian Jane Turner, have known each other since they were teenagers.

"I get instant cred with people I've never met before in New York, London, Paris, Rome, Beijing, Singapore, Jakarta. If they know one thing about Australia, over and above the classic flora and fauna, they've seen or heard of Kath & Kim," John says about his marriage to Jane, AKA Kathleen 'Kath' Darleen Day Knight.

About John, Jane says "The best advice I've received from John is to be steady as you go: staying steady and calm. He can always help me stay calm about issues, and he's very rational. He models tenacity and a problem-solving ability."

The laser focus of BOSS Young Executives 2016

To be the one who makes the final call day in and day out takes a certain type of confidence. Felicity Furey, senior project manager at global engineering firm Arup, believes backing yourself is the most crucial aspect of leadership.

Furey is one of the six BOSS Young Executives of 2016, an energetic and ambitious cohort from across the country. Working in industries from medicine to hardware, all have combined their individual skills with a sharp business acumen, making them multidisciplinary and extremely capable.

Their wide-ranging skills, comfort with technology and results-focused drive mean these young leaders can extract the best from their workforce and achieve visionary results.

Meet eight fintechs changing financial services

Thirty of the country's best fintechs are pitching to a room full of 160-plus bankers, brokers and venture capitalists at the Grand Hyatt ballroom in Melbourne, where their story, business plan and even looks are all being judged.

The banks are all vying for a stake in these disrupters before they join the 46 unicorns in the "billion dollar club". A recent Money of the Future report says fintech investment hit $20.3 billion last year.

But with more than 5000 fintech start-ups already in the game, the trick is picking which ones will emerge successful.

Why ANZ's new chief is shrinking the empire

For all his enthusiasm about innovation, Shayne Elliott is quite candid about where ANZ is falling short. Like its industry peers, ANZ is still coming to grips with digital disruption. But rightly or wrongly, there's a strong sense that ANZ lags the other big banks in its understanding of and capacity to respond to the phenomenon.

His to-do list is lengthy. ANZ is a long-term underperformer and investors are demanding improved returns. Lurid allegations from former global markets employees that ANZ tolerated a culture of bad behaviour are yet to be proven but the embarrassing headlines do provide impetus for cultural change within the bank.

But that's far from the only challenge facing Elliott, who took over as chief executive on January 1.

How Daniel Agostinelli turned $46K into $50m

Daniel Agostinelli had several difficult conversations with his parents when he began building his retail career, which made him richer than he ever could have imagined.

The first was to tell his parents, Italian migrants, he wouldn't be going to university but instead would be working to build a chain of music stores with a 22-year-old entrepreneur, called Brett Blundy. It was the early 1980s and Agostinelli was only 17.

Blundy had to convince Agostinelli's parents he was making the right decision. "It was a difficult conversation," recalls Agostinelli.

'Sydney's shite': Melbourne's culture lures start-up talent

When one of the founders of a big US tech start-up recently opened an office in Victoria he was asked by a journalist why he chose Melbourne: "Cos Sydney's shite," he replied.

It's a story the Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and his popular Innovation Minister Philip Dalidakis relish repeating as they spruik the state's credentials in the battle to claim the title as Australia's savviest state.

The Premier can afford to crow. Victoria has attracted a host of prized Silicon Valley start-ups in the past two years, including Slack, Square, GoPro and Zendesk, which have all set up their local headquarters in Melbourne.

The story behind PwC's outspoken boss

PricewaterhouseCoopers chief executive Luke Sayers is easy in his surroundings. A man frequently out of his comfort zone, the 46-year-old has learnt to wear uncertainty with a degree of nonchalance.

At 42, Sayers became the youngest CEO in the history of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). "I certainly stuffed up because I was outside my natural environment a lot of the time," says Sayers.

In the four years since, he has led the $1.9 billion firm on a solid growth trajectory and overseen the integration of strategy house Booz & Co, which PwC acquired in 2014 in one of the biggest global deals in the professional services sector in the past decade.

The secret to Blackmores' success

After meeting Blackmores chairman and majority shareholder Marcus Blackmore in May 2008, Christine Holgate was intrigued. On offer was the chance to run an expanding public company, but she had her doubts.

In an effort to get a read on each other, Holgate travelled to the vitamin and supplements company's headquarters on Sydney's Northern Beaches. Blackmore ushered her into his office and pulled down a framed photograph of a young, handsome Filipino man.

"He said, 'This is my son. Nobody here knows about my son but I'd been wondering what to tell you so you know you can trust me.' " At that time, the existence of Blackmore's adult son, Alexander Borromeo, who was born in the United States and has captained the Philippines soccer team, was known only to his father's inner circle. Holgate was struck by the gesture.

Business leaders proudly join LGBTI list

For Qantas CEO Alan Joyce, who began his career being discreet about being his sexuality, part of this normalisation is for young LGBTI people to have corporate role models.

Joyce, Optus SingTel chairman Paul O'Sullivan, and former Business Council of Australia CEO Jennifer Westacott are among the high-profile executives who appear on The Australian Financial Review BOSS Magazine's 50 LGBTI leaders list.

The list was compiled by Deloitte and features chief executives, chairmen and chairwomen, professional services partners and senior executives from across the corporate landscape. They know how important it is to be role models given research shows half of LGBTI employees feel they have to hide their sexuality at work.

How Ray Itaoui turned $500,000 into $210m in seven years

Brett Blundy built Sanity from a single store in Melbourne. But even for him the challenges facing the 250-store group seemed insurmountable. The BB Retail Capital board, of which Blundy was chairman, proposed spending $18 million to close it.

Sanity's then 36-year-old chief executive, Itaoui, was shocked. But what at the time seemed like the ultimate vote of no confidence turned out to be the opportunity of a lifetime. 

Itaoui decided there had to be another option and, even though Blundy thought he was 'insane', when he offered to take the chain off his hands for nothing. In return he would take on the losses and the risk of trying to turn it around.

Nine years later and Sanity, with more than 1000 staff, continues to perform strongly reporting a $10 million profit in the year to June 2015.